MySQL Create Table Exercises: Create a table employees, and make sure that, the employee_id column should be unique, and set foreign keys referencing to another table using ON DELETE SET NULL and ON UPDATE SET NULL action

MySQL Create Tables: Exercise-19 with Solution

19. Write a SQL statement to create a table employees including columns employee_id, first_name, last_name, job_id, salary and make sure that, the employee_id column does not contain any duplicate value at the time of insertion, and the foreign key column job_id, referenced by the column job_id of jobs table, can contain only those values which are exists in the jobs table. The InnoDB Engine have been used to create the tables. The specialty of the statement is that, The ON DELETE SET NULL action will set the foreign key column values in the child table(employees) to NULL when the record in the parent table(jobs) is deleted, with a condition that the foreign key column in the child table must accept NULL values and the ON UPDATE SET NULL action resets the values in the rows in the child table(employees) to NULL values when the rows in the parent table(jobs) are updated.

Assume that the structure of two table jobs and InnoDB Engine have been used to create the table jobs.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS jobs ( 
JOB_ID integer NOT NULL UNIQUE PRIMARY KEY, 
JOB_TITLE varchar(35) NOT NULL DEFAULT ' ', 
MIN_SALARY decimal(6,0) DEFAULT 8000, 
MAX_SALARY decimal(6,0) DEFAULT NULL
)ENGINE=InnoDB;


+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field      | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| JOB_ID     | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| JOB_TITLE  | varchar(35)  | NO   |     |         |       |
| MIN_SALARY | decimal(6,0) | YES  |     | 8000    |       |
| MAX_SALARY | decimal(6,0) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Sample Solution:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS employees ( 
EMPLOYEE_ID decimal(6,0) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, 
FIRST_NAME varchar(20) DEFAULT NULL, 
LAST_NAME varchar(25) NOT NULL, 
JOB_ID INTEGER, 
SALARY decimal(8,2) DEFAULT NULL, 
FOREIGN KEY(JOB_ID) 
REFERENCES  jobs(JOB_ID)
ON DELETE SET NULL 
ON UPDATE SET NULL
)ENGINE=InnoDB;

Let execute the above code in MySQL 5.6 command prompt

Here is the structure of the table:

mysql> DESC employees;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field          | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| EMPLOYEE_ID    | decimal(6,0) | NO   | PRI | NULL    |       |
| FIRST_NAME     | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| LAST_NAME      | varchar(25)  | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| EMAIL          | varchar(25)  | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| PHONE_NUMBER   | varchar(20)  | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| HIRE_DATE      | date         | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| JOB_ID         | varchar(10)  | NO   |     | NULL    |       |
| SALARY         | decimal(8,2) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| COMMISSION_PCT | decimal(2,2) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| MANAGER_ID     | decimal(6,0) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| DEPARTMENT_ID  | decimal(4,0) | YES  | MUL | NULL    |       |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
11 rows in set (0.01 sec)

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